NovelTrend

NovelTrend is a website for reading and publishing web novels, chapter by chapter — like Webnovel, but simpler.

• Readers can browse novels, search and filter by genre or tags, read chapters (with light/dark/sepia themes and adjustable text), and save novels to a personal library. Anyone can browse and read without an account.
• Authors are just readers who turn on "Author Mode" on their profile page. Once it's on, they can publish novels and write chapters (as drafts, or published for everyone to read).

This guide assumes no coding experience. It walks through everything needed to get your own copy of NovelTrend running live on the internet, for free.

What you'll set up

1. A Supabase project — this is the database that stores novels, chapters, and accounts. Free.
2. Vercel — this hosts the website itself, so people can visit it. Free.

Step 1: Create a Supabase project

1. Go to supabase.com and sign up (or log in).
2. Click New project. Give it any name, set a database password (save it somewhere safe — you likely won't need it again), and pick a region close to your users.
3. Wait a minute or two for the project to finish setting up.

Step 2: Set up the database

1. In your Supabase project, open the SQL Editor in the left sidebar.
2. Click New query.
3. Open the file supabase/migrations/0001_init.sql from this project, copy its entire contents, and paste it into the SQL Editor. Click Run. This creates all the tables NovelTrend needs and locks them down so people can only see and change what they're supposed to.
4. Click New query again. Open supabase/seed.sql, copy its contents in, and click Run. This adds a starter list of genres and tags (like "Fantasy" or "Slow Burn") that authors can pick from.

Step 3: Find your project's API keys

1. In Supabase, go to Settings (gear icon) → API.
2. You'll need two values from this page:
   • Project URL — a link starting with https://.
   • anon public key — a long string of letters and numbers, under "Project API keys".

Keep this page open — you'll need to paste these into Vercel next.

Step 4: Put the code on Vercel

1. Go to vercel.com and sign up (or log in) — you can sign up using your GitHub account, which makes this step easier.
2. Click Add New → Project.
3. Choose Import Git Repository and select this project's GitHub repository. (If you don't see it, use "Adjust GitHub App Permissions" to give Vercel access to it.)
4. Before clicking Deploy, open Environment Variables and add three:
   • NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL → paste your Supabase Project URL.
   • NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY → paste your Supabase anon public key.
   • NOVELTREND_GUEST_SECRET → a private random string of at least 16 characters. This signs the cookie that identifies logged-out readers, so nobody can hand-edit it to pretend to be a new visitor on every request. Any long random string works — for example, on your own computer you can run openssl rand -hex 32 in a terminal and paste the result. Keep it secret and never share it. If you later change this value, every existing logged-out reader will look like a brand-new visitor to the site's trending numbers, so only rotate it if you actually mean to.
5. Click Deploy. After a minute or two, Vercel will give you a live web address, like https://your-project.vercel.app.

Step 5: Let people log in from your live site

1. Copy the web address Vercel gave you.
2. Back in Supabase, go to Authentication → URL Configuration.
3. Add your Vercel address to Redirect URLs (and set it as the Site URL too). This tells Supabase your live site is allowed to handle sign-ups and logins.

That's it — your site is live. Visit your Vercel address, sign up for an account, turn on Author Mode on your profile page, and publish your first novel.

Making changes later

Whenever you (or someone helping you) push new code changes to the GitHub repository, Vercel automatically rebuilds and updates the live site within a minute or two — no extra steps needed.

If the database ever needs to change (for example, to add a new feature), that will come as a new file in supabase/migrations/. Run it the same way as Step 2: open it, copy it, paste it into the Supabase SQL Editor, and click Run.